Tim Blair disputes Charles Johnson’s estimate of the size of the September 12 rally. Johnson wrote: Here’s the Washington DC Metrorail service information for Saturday, September 12, 2009: September 12, 2009: Metrorail: 437,624 Comparable Metrorail Ridership 1 Year Ago: 362,773 The difference between these two figures is — 74,851. Oddly enough, this almost exactly matches…

Carl Zimmer summarizes: In earlier days, Will liked to claim the World Meteorological Organization as an authority when he wrote that there has been no global warming since 1998. Now that the World Meteorological Organization has set things straight, he’s claiming a columnist at National Review as his authority. That’s quite an upgrade. Actually, it’s…

Glenn Reynolds declares that a private listserv run by Ezra Klein is a “scandal”. Which is interesting, because I first ran into Glenn Reynolds on a private listserv run by Eugene Volokh. The members included pro-gun law professors like Reynolds, an NRA staffer and at least one journalist. I do not consider Volokh’s listserv to…

The identity of the person who hoaxed Keith Windschuttle has been revealed. Katherine Wilson had left many clues and several people figured that she was the hoaxer. Meanwhile, Keith Windschuttle continues to deny that he was hoaxed, because: A real hoax, like that of Alan Sokal and Ern Malley, is designed to expose editors who…

Via Sadly No!, we find out the latest from the SF authors who helped bring us Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative Now a fixture at Department of Homeland Security science and technology conferences, SIGMA is a loosely affiliated group of science fiction writers who are offering pro bono advice to anyone in government who want their…

John Quiggin writes about the culture warmongers: Third, and most importantly, the factoid-based, point-scoring, style of argument that goes with the culture wars eventually leads to complete insulation from factual reality. Any proposition, no matter how ridiculous, can be defended in this way, long after the average person has seen through it. This has been…

Caroline Overington has topped her previous effort with this: Top journalist Caroline Overington has denied hitting George Newhouse, the Labor candidate for the Sydney seat of Wentworth – but he insists he was slapped, and it hurt. … A Labor campaigner, who witnessed the alleged slap, said Overington had her children with her. “She came…

Via James Hrynyshyn, Nature has a good summary of the state of climate politics in the lead up to Bali. There’s even a decent summary of the state of play in Austrlia. Any campaign veteran will tell you that voters are fickle, switching from candidate to candidate and issue to issue as the whim takes…

It’s always good value when Media Watch criticizes The Australian because journalists there react with foaming-at-the-mouth outrage. For example, when Media Watch nailed them for misrepresenting Rajenda Pachauri they reacted with 4672 words blasting Media Watch, including the entire editorial, stories from Caroline Overington and Matthew Warren and an opinion piece from David Salter. So…